Home at last…

Whew…ok, it’s barely been 2 days since I’ve returned to the “www” (wild wild west) here in Vancouver, but it’s been pretty nuts…just chilling w/ people, getting reacquainted with this beautiful city, and reintegrating myself into this strange new house that is now home. But before I even bother trying to write about life in Vancouver, for now I’ll tell you a traveler’s tale; an account of my final few days in Ontario, a story with ups and downs, suspense, rejoicing, disappointment, and ultimately redemption. Ready? Here we go…

(!WARNING! long road ahead…)

One Last Adventure

Wednesday, April 28, 2004 – My Last Day in Waterloo

It’d been a pretty busy “last day” in Waterloo: walked w/ two 20lb boxes all the way to the postal outlet to ship them home, walked to school to pick up my grad class photo, and I was sitting in my basement trying to figure out how to return my bed to westcourt when all of a sudden I got some phone calls from last minute sub-letters. This was amazing, as I had pretty much given up on finding a sub-letter this late in the season, so I was pretty happy when the second sub-letter (yes, the second, TWO different people came by to see the place, now that’s tripped out) decided to take the place for $150/month. Hey, it was dirt cheap, but something’s better than nothing right? Also, since he was taking the place furnished, I didn’t have to worry about transporting my mattress back to Westcourt that day. Only catch was that now I had to really rush to pack my stuff up and move out of the place so he could move in (since I was leaving for Vancouver the next morning), and I also needed to find some way to meet up with the guy to give him the keys. This was a bit of a problem, as I was also in a bit of a rush to go for dinner at philthy’s w/ alex wang. Anyway, so I ended up meeting the guy at philthy’s to give him the keys, then it was off to westcourt to chill and help waiki clean a bit while I waited for mike to come back from TO so I could sleep over at his house before he drove me to the airport early the next morning. Unfortunately, it wasn’t till I was at westcourt that I realized I’d left my glasses in the washroom at my old place, and when I called the subletter to see if we could go back and get them he’d already gone back home to London. So, I felt a little stressed, but I guess I could always get my housemate who was staying for summer term to send them back to Vancouver to me.

Mike got back around 0130ish, we went to seagram, just chilled for a bit, then crashed around 2-3ish, expecting to leave the house by 5am to get to the airport in time to check-in for my 0730 departure time flight on HMY Airways…

Thursday, April 29, 2004 – The Day I Was Supposed to Leave Toronto

So…we woke up around 5am, left about 20min. after that, but I wasn’t panicking or anything, we still should’ve had plenty of time to make it to the airport by 0630 or so, under NORMAL circumstances…but for some reason I never seem to find myself in “normal” circumstances, and we hit a massive traffic jam somewhere outside of ‘sauga or something. The 401 eastbound was shutdown to just one lane, and we ended up being stuck bumper-to-bumper for over an hour. We found ways to pass the time by talking about things like whether or not I should run outside and relieve myself on the highway median (I needed to piss real bad), whether the camera man filming the traffic jam for CityTV was mike’s friend phil or not, and how far along we’d moved through the traffic in comparison with the truck in the next lane with the constipated Scooby-Doo doll stuck in the back window. Mike also discovered that at one point in time I was known as “Rodphage”, but that’s another story all together…

we didn’t get to the airport till like 0800, and luckily mike decided he’d park and come in w/ me to the check-in desk b/c most likely I’d have to get on a later flight and he didn’t want me waiting around w/ all my luggage by myself. So we go in, only to find that HMY didn't even have any reps on hand, because the 0730 flight was their only one for the day, they'd packed up and left. That meant that I couldn't even talk to them in person, much less try to get transferred onto a later flight that day. Mike had to go to matthew mark’s (aka dr. rumble) house to do some recording w/ the guys from the ccf house band, so I ended up tagging along w/ them for the rest of the afternoon. While I was there I called their 1-800 number and talked to a rep who told me their next flight out wasn’t till 0730 Friday morning. They said they’d put me on that one, but I’d have to pay the fare difference, which was an additional $250 on top of my $190 ticket!! I promptly said HELLL NO and tried to find a cheaper solution. After discovering that all last minute flights from other airlines for the next day were going for well over $500, I reluctantly called HMY back and paid the $250 to book what they said was “the last seat” on the plane. So, I was obviously a little pissed, but I made the best of it n it was cool chilling in the studio at matt’s basement listening to them record. The previous post was made there (see below), and after the session, just spent the rest of the day around TO, went for dinner w/ mike, gerrome, n anna at the pickle barrel, drove anna home afterwards n then we met up w/ G n went for ice caps, just sat n chilled on the corner of Brimley & Ellesmere for a bit. It was nice: cold drinks, a warm summer night, and two loud and angry chinamen yelling and waving at drivers running yellow lights, two angry chinamen who seemed determined to see some poor sap get t-boned that night. Well luckily nobody got smashed, n after we left mike just took me on a short walking tour of his neighbourhood in north york, showed me the stuff around city hall, empress walk, stuff like that, a pretty nice neighbourhood. Went to sleep around 0230ish.

Friday April 30, 2004 – The Second Day I Was Supposed to Leave Toronto

We woke up at like 0430, not wanting to miss another flight (I was still pissed about the $250), and we go to the airport around 0500. while I was checking in my bags I brought up the fact that I’d been cut short $250 because of my having missed yesterday’s flight. Yes, I knew that it was technically “my fault” (even though the massive traffic jam was unavoidable and unpredictable), but I still felt that $250 was an unjust amount for something that could have easily been treated as a last minute date change (other airlines like westjet have been known to just stick tardy customer’s on later flights, pending seat availability, for something like a $30). The check-in girl was unbelievably rude (no smile, no sympathy at all, she rushed me through check-in so bad I didn’t even have time to stick an address tag on one of my bags!), and so I asked to speak to a supervisor, and she turned out to be no better! My opinion of HMY was pretty negative at this point, and I was tired n beat, and not wanting to make a scene (I just wanted to get home), I just quit arguing n left to go wait at the boarding gate. While walking to the gate, I bumped into 2 girls from my highschool in Vancouver (Bonnie & Jenny). Turns out that they were on the same flight as me, on their way home after having done a 9-day trip to Montreal, TO & Niagara. That was pretty trip too, and as I found out later, I’d find their company invaluable.

The flight was scheduled to leave at 0730 but we didn’t board till 0745. we were sitting in the plane, I was getting ready to pass out, and the plane had already taxied out to the runway…when the captain came on the intercom and said “…we’re having some mechanical problems…it’ll just be a few minutes…” after what seemed like half an hour, we felt the plane turn around, and we were headed back for the terminal. “…we’re getting some mechanics/technicians to look at what seems to be a fuel line problem…once again this should only take a few minutes…” after another 20-or-so minutes we had to deplane.

Sitting in the terminal now, I’m pretty pissed, I’d paid over $400 but I didn’t mind cuz I THOUGHT I was gonna at least get outta here by Friday morning, but now that didn’t seem like it was gonna happen either. They gave us free $10 vouchers to go get food, but that didn’t really do much in the way of appeasement. Here’s where the company’s value kicks in, because if I’d been by myself this whole time I’d have been bored out of my mind, so at least I got to chill n chat w/ some ppl I hadn’t seen/talked to for a long time. Some Korean dude from North York also started talking to us, so he joined our little “group”. After another hour or so, we see the plane leave the terminal “…we’re taking the plane out for some testing, we should hopefully be ready to take-off in the next little while. Thank you for your patience.” 30min. later the plane returns…the flight’s grounded.

I had a few options here, try to get a ticket on another airline (get the entire amount I paid HMY refunded), wait for HMY to put us on another airline if they had seats to spare, or get really pissed off and demand that they let me fly the damn plane home by myself. In the end, I kept my cool and waited…and waited and waited…and the ended up telling us that the next HMY flight they could put us on would be leaving 0145 on Saturday morning. They’d pay for us to stay at the Airport Sheraton, and give us a free lunch and dinner while we were there. After some discussion, we decided we’d take the hotel option. here’s where things got interesting though:

We had to retrieve our baggage and re-check in that night at 2300 if we were going to take the hotel option, so we all went down to the baggage claim area. This was around 1230 in the afternoon, and I was pretty tired, but at least I felt a little better knowing I was getting free lunch and dinner and a room at the Sheraton, so I felt like I was “kind of” getting my $250 worth…so imagine my disdain when I picked up my baggage and found my guitar case damaged! it wasn’t totally ruined, but it had obviously been mistreated and didn’t even have a “fragile” tag on it, there was a big scratch and a chunk gouged out of it. I thought “great! Why? Why now? Crap just keeps on happening!” so I decide to go back to the HMY people at the gate (there’s no more people at the check-in desk, they’ve all left) to complain about the case. I was originally going to just wait until I got back to Vancouver to complain, I was so tired n hungry, but I asked a baggage security for advice and she told me to take care of it right away, so I did. Here’s another time where bumping into bonnie & jenny came in handy, they watched my luggage for me so I wouldn’t have to lug it all back through security to the gate.

When I got to the gate there were 2 separate lines, 1 at the booth, and another lineup for this lady who was just talking to people in the crowd. I tried lining up for both lines, switching back and forth for a bit whenever one line seemed shorter than the other, but in the end I ended up talking to the lady talking to people in the crowd…lucky me! Turns out she was the “boss” there, the Operations Manager. I told her the whole story (about missing the flight, paying the extra $250, now this delay, and my guitar case), and I was pretty nice about it too. She paused for a bit, then looked at me and told me she wouldn’t be able to do anything about my guitar case at the moment, that she needed to get some paperwork for it, but she told me to talk to her about it when I checked in later that night at 2300. I thought to myself…ok…and then the shocker came when she told me that she was empathetic of all I’d gone through, and she gave me here name and number, telling me to call the HMY airways 1-800 number and tell them that she’d authorize a refund for my $250….woohoo!! I can’t tell you how happy that made me feel at that moment…you guys would’ve thought someone had just given me a year’s supply of free steak or something…but man did that ever brighten my day and take a load off my mind! I was practically FLYING back through the terminal, running with my guitar case, back to meet up with jenny, bonnie, and Andrew (the Korean dude) before we checked into the Sheraton.

things kept getting better…the free lunch and dinner they’d promised us was a BUFFET lunch and dinner!! Woohoo!! I had a much needed SHOWER and a good nap, and spent some time just playing my guitar while looking out from my room window which overlooked the city.

(I had some pictures left over in my disposal camera, so I took some shots to document our stay at the Sheraton )

While strumming away n taking in the view, I closed my eyes and thanked God for this whole ordeal, what had started out as something bad, going from worse, to worst had now turned out better than I could’ve imagined; I was getting my money back, I was getting free food, and now instead of flying home all dirty and tired, I would be clean, well-rested and well-fed before flying home.

you could say that it’s just some fluke that things turned out good in the end, and yeah ok sure, it could’ve been. But certain small things seemed to make more sense now, it’s as if I could see why certain things had to have happened. For example, me missing my flight: I wouldn’t have gotten to see/hear the guys do their recording session or chill w/ them for one last day in T.O.; bumping into my highschool friends: having someone to chill with and keep me company to dispel boredom; my guitar case getting damaged: if it had never gotten damaged, I would’ve never gone back up to complain. If I’d never complained, I would’ve never gotten to talk to the Operations Manager, and if it weren’t for me talking to her it’s likely that I would’ve never gotten my $250 back. And there’s more: when I finally talked to her about my guitar case, she told me to go buy a replacement one, and to send them the receipt for reimbursement. So, I’m also getting a new guitar case, so I’ll have the old one which can act as a spare to take camping or whatever, and the new one I can use for traveling (it’s also extra incentive for me to get a new guitar, acoustic/electric? Hahaha). AND for the FINAL bit, that extra perk on top of all these perks, the cherry on top of that sweet mountain of whipped cream…..(drum roll)…..as a result of the extreme delays that we had to put up with, all passengers are going to receive a voucher for a FREE ROUNDTRIP TICKET to anywhere HMY flies! Ahh…looks like I’m going to be coming back for convocation after all? And courtesy of HMY too! Lol, could it be? Yet another chance to find “true love” on the east coast? Lol, this is all too funny now when I look back:

Original ticket ($190)
+ Additional fare charge ($250)
- Free food voucher ($10)
+ Friends to chill with during a flight delay (priceless)
+ Free BUFFET Lunch (priceless)
+ Free BUFFET Dinner (priceless)
+ a hot shower (priceless)
+ a nice nap in a nice hotel room w/ a nice view (priceless)
- Fare refund ($250)
- Free/reimbursed guitar case ($80)
+ Free ticket back to ONT for Convo (priceless)
----------------------------------------------------
k…I don’t know how to figure out this equation, but I’m pretty sure I got a damn good deal out of it! Lol, so there it is folks, my multi-day adventure, man I wonder what it is with me n mishaps eh? Nyeh, until next time…


(o yeah, btw, the flight back at 0145 went ok, took off a bit late, but other than that it was fine)